1. The number one optimization technique is to create useful and relevant content for your visitors. This is extremely vital to your success. It should be always be your first thought when you are creating your pages for your site.
2. Choose your keyword search terms so that reflect the theme of your site and the business market you wish to target. However, don't go crazy with hundreds of keywords. This will kill your ranking, not help it. Limit your keywords to only 5 to 10.
3. Use your keyword search terms throughout your web page. Most importantly, use your keywords or keyphrase(s) as close to the top of the you pages as possible, within the first 600 characters.
4. Your meta title tag should use your most important keyword phrase or keyword at least once and keep the entire title tag to 60 characters or less.
5. Use your keywords or phrase in your heading tags as well to increase the relevance for that keyword phrase on your page.
6. Be sure to use the "alt" image tag for all the graphics on your pages. Use your keyword phrases in these tags.
7. Never try to hide or "stuff" your keyword text by making it the same color as the background color of your page or the search engines will consider this spam and dump you.
8. Set up your own domain name. Do not host your site on a free web hosting service or on a shared domain name. If you do the search engines will consider your site"unimportant" and ignore it. Plus, it also shows a lack of professionalism on your part and will hurt your sales - if you are a sales orientated site.
9. With domain names so inexpensive these days ($8.95 at goDaddy.com for example you can afford to buy variations and misspellings of your domain name to prevent others from capitalizing on your web site's success, and to help those who can't spell!
10. Using your keyword phrase in your domain name can actually help boost rankings in the search engines. Using dashes (---) in your domain may also help you rank higher for your chosen keywords. Just be sure to link these sort of domains to your main site.
11. Name your web pages with the primary keyword phrase chosen for that particular web page.
12. If you are starting a new web business, include your keyword phrase as part of the name of your business if you can. This will help both for "branding" purposes and make it easier for your site to be found on the web.
13. Create a professional looking web site. Your site is your storefront and reflects your business image. An attractive site builds credibility and trust with your visitors.
14. ALWAYS test your site to be sure that it displays correctly in IE, Netscape and on the Mac. You'd be shocked at how the different browsers interpret html and can ruin your page design.
15. ALWAYS test your site for broken links BEFORE submitting to the engines.
16. Have a friend proofread your site for typos, spelling and grammatical errors.
17. Include a button or text link back to your home page on every page at your site. But DO NOT call it "home.html"! Give your home page link a name that uses your most popular keyword.
18. The first page of your site should be fast loading. Search engines cannot index graphic words --- only words in text will be indexed and ranked by the engines. Though we break this rule on our site, you should avoid using flash and all graphics home pages.
19. Google considers any type of cloaking (creating artificial site pages for the sole purpose of gaining higher search engine rankings) to be spam.
20. Create a site map for your web site. This allows both visitors and search engines to see all the pages at your site.
Here's a GREAT gift ebook that could put your website at #1- enjoy! It's called 101 Ways to Bullseye the Search Engines! Make 2010 your best online year yet!